Drew Goddard

Writer-producer-director Drew Goddard was a guiding force behind some of the most popular and critically praised series and films of the early millennium, including "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (The WB/UPN, 1997-2003), "Lost" (ABC, 2004-2010), "Cloverfield" (2008), "The Cabin in the Woods" (2011), "Daredevil" (Netflix, 2015-2018) and "The Good Place" (NBC, 2016-2020). Born Andrew Brion Hogan Goddard on February 26, 1975 in Houston, Texas, he was raised in Los Alamos, New Mexico by his parents, who were educators. After graduating from the University of Colorado Boulder in 1997, Goddard headed to Los Angeles, where he worked in various entertainment industry jobs while pursuing his goal of becoming a screenwriter. An unsolicited script he wrote for the HBO series "Six Feet Under" (2001-2005) made its way to producer Joss Whedon, who hired Goddard as a staff writer for his popular young adult series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." He would pen five episodes for the program, including the Hugo Award-winning "Conversations with Dead People" in 2003, before moving to its spin-off series, "Angel" (The WB, 1999-2004), where he served as both writer and executive story editor. When "Angel" ran its course, Goddard was hired by J.J. Abrams to write and co-produce his espionage series "Alias" (ABC, 2001-2006), which led to a stint as writer and co-executive producer on Abrams' cult science fiction series, "Lost". His work on the latter series netted an Emmy nomination and multiple nods from both the Writers and Producers Guild, and also served as the launching pad for his feature film career when Abrams tapped him to write "Cloverfield." The found footage thriller, about a monster loose in New York City, was the subject of a huge and complex promotional campaign, which helped to make it not only a sizable box office hit but also the foundation for a modest franchise of horror-science fiction films, including 2016's "10 Cloverfield Lane," all with Goddard as executive producer. The success of "Cloverfield" led to Goddard's own debut as co-writer-director on "The Cabin in the Woods." The feature, co-written and produced by Whedon, was both a clever and energetic tribute to slasher films and an elaborate meditation on the tropes involved in horror films, and earned numerous critical awards for its script; Goddard would soon become an in-demand creative figure for high-profile fantasy, science fiction and horror films, and in quick succession, rewrote the script for "World War Z" (2013) and "The Martian" (2015), a mordantly funny look at the perils of space colonization for director Ridley Scott that earned Goddard an Oscar nomination. Between these feature efforts, Goddard also forged a relationship with Marvel Films, which tapped him to create and write a series built around its venerable Daredevil character, a blind lawyer whose incredible powers of perception allowed him to fight crime. The resulting series, which aired on Netflix from 2015 to 2018, spawned a slew of spin-offs and related programs with Goddard as part of its production team, including "The Defenders" (Netflix, 2017), which teamed Daredevil with three other Marvel heroes, all of whom also enjoyed their own Netflix series. While working on their network efforts, Goddard was also tapped to pen a feature film built around the Sinister Six, a team of supervillains who had been individually defeated by Spider-Man. The project was ultimately canceled, as was a chance for Goddard to direct Sony's reboot of its Spider-Man film franchise; he rebounded by directing his second feature, the noir-inflected drama "Bad Times at the El Royale" (2018). The stylish thriller, which starred Jeff Bridges, Jon Hamm and Cynthia Erivo, was a modest box office hit, but earned critical praise for its cast and Goddard's direction. During this period, Goddard was also serving as executive producer and occasional director on "The Good Place" (NBC, 2016-2020), producer Michael Schur's quirky philosophical exploration disguised as an irreverent fantasy-comedy about four mismatched souls in the afterlife.